2024-03-24 19:53:20 ¶ ●

The thread flowing through “Ouef” is so nice. Starting out, Will confessess that he likes to leave the lights on in his house in the dark and look at it from afar so that it resembles a boat, and that this image comforts him. We then accompany Hannibal as he snoops around Will’s home. There is a spotlight shone on Hannibal finishing tying Will’s incomplete fishing lure. In the therapy session following this, Will tells Hannibal that his father was a fisherman/mechanic of boat mortors and he spent his childhood moving from one body of water to the next. They were poor. Will was forced to adjust to changing environments. Next, Hannibal and Jack are eating dinner. Hannibal tells Jack that Will finds this case to be specifically trying due to the nature of it involving kids, and that Will finds comfort in the “simpler days in the boatyard with dad” and that these memories anchor him as an adult (re: home filled with fishing gear). That this childhood memory is tainted is difficult for Will’s sensibilities to carry. “He needs an anchor, Jack.” Next scene, Will discovers another family gone, this time the child is found with them, and he compulsively buys a present for Abigail. What is the present? Fishing lure kit. We go back to Will’s “anchor”, the memories of learning fishing from dad and his desperation to hold onto them amidst such terrible violence corroding his innocence in his present life.

He realises how wildly inappropriate it is for him to approach Abigail in this way and holds himself back, of course, to the visible disappointment of Hannibal who is maneuvering a connection between himself, Will, and Abigail so as to baby trap Will throughout the episode. So much about Will can be discovered upon observation and it is scary to know that Hannibal is so keen as to immediately be able understand it and try to take advantage of it.